


Scales of Desperation

by Depraved Necromancer (DragonaireAbsolvare)



Series: Libra- The scales [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Ambition, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Desperation, Dreams, Dystopia, Escape, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Good Tom Riddle, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, It Gets Worse, Knockturn Alley, No Magic AU, Orphans, Poverty, Self-Mutilation, Slums, Tom is a Sweetheart, Underage Rape/Non-con, it's not that horrible, the tags make it sound worse than it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27619583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonaireAbsolvare/pseuds/Depraved%20Necromancer
Summary: Proud though he may be of the fine brambles atop his head, but a stag shall break his antlers if they entrap him in the hunter’s net.Tom and Harry in a dystopian slum setting.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: Libra- The scales [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018423
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Scales of Desperation

In the vast wasteland where the unwanted gather, two boys survived.

All they had was each other, and a spot in the niche between two forgotten shipping containers of old- and the ancient, flaking asbestos sheet they had dragged up to make a roof over their heads.

The slums of Knockturn were infamous for their filth and squalor, and for the mass of vagrants and nonentities who ended up there, having no place to belong.

Tom Riddle had been born in Knockturn, learning to raise himself amidst the scum of the Earth. His mother had been a prostitute there, and she had died giving birth to him. But he _knew,_ in his blood, that his place was in the high halls of Hogwarts, where the noblemen made merry and lived off the teeming masses, the lower echelons of society.

The boy had survived alone for years, until he found a stray child, thrown into the bowels of Knockturn by his peasant family.

This child did not have a name- for ‘Freak’ and ‘Boy’ were no names, and Tom took it upon himself to care for the young child who seemed to have latched onto him.

“Harry Riddle?” The child lisped out, wincing at the foreign syllables on his tongue. But he tore into the mouldy piece of bread and discoloured water with a voracity Tom was very familiar with.

“Yes.” Tom smiled, stuffing his own piece of bread into his mouth. “Remember, you are mine.”

He and the newly christened Harry scavenged the slums for anything they could use or have, and fought with other stray children- and animals- like rabid mongrels. Later, when the suns fell and blanketed the wasteland in darkness, Tom huddled Harry against him, asbestos dust sticking to their bare legs and smoked on fags they collected from the brothels, trying to keep warm.

There was neither moon nor stars in Knockturn, the land where darkness reigned.

“It won’t always be like this.” Tom promised Harry as he pressed the last glowing fag to Harry’s ashen lips. The other boy took a long draw and coughed- as the last source of warmth fell upon their thighs as ashes.

“There are ways out of this hellhole. We’ll go to Hogwarts and start anew.”

Harry hummed and laid his head on Tom’s shoulder. “Is it really true, that they can have warmth and light whenever they like it?”

Tom nodded. “And food- they have so many things to eat. And clothes, lovelier than the ones the whores here wear.”

Harry stared in awe.

Tom was close to Madam Cole, of the brothel his mother had belonged to. The prostitutes there would tell him stories of the dashing crowds who came to take their pleasure- of wealth and security and fineries- of getting everything one wanted in the world. It was true- in Knockturn, the best goods went to the brothels, and _they_ talked about the world outside the slums as a marvel. Even the Diagonal City nearby was worlds apart from Knockturn’s waste heaps.

There were ways to get out of Knockturn.

Children- orphans especially- had a better chance of escaping. There was a time of the year when the Snatchers- the very same people who supplied Knockturn’s brothels with human goods- hunted for orphans they could traffick to the large cities.

The feral children of the slums lived in terror of the Snatchers, because not one child snatched by them had ever been heard of again.

Tom reasoned that no one would want to return or be associated to Knockturn- so naturally the ones who escaped wouldn’t reach out.

And one day, he decided that he was going away with the Snatchers. Once he got to Hogwarts, he could make it on his own. Madam Cole had admitted that Tom was unnaturally beautiful, a surprise considering that his mother had been one of the ugliest prostitutes in the business. He could use his beauty and intelligence and whatever resources he had on hand to become a respectable, independent citizen of Hogwarts.

His eyes flitted to the child curled up beside him.

And so could Harry.

Harry looked divine in the rays of red sunlight filtering out through holes in the asbestos sheet. And while Harry wasn’t as shrewd or cunning as Tom, he was intelligent enough to survive. Besides, Harry Riddle was Tom’s- and Tom would take care of what was his.

They’d live together, and find work- perhaps Tom could become a politician. He had heard of them, regulars of Madam Cole’s. Tom rather liked the thought of himself being powerful and ruling Hogwarts.

It was very easy- the Snatchers were nothing if thorough in their search.

Tom held Harry and waited inside one of the containers- along with the five other families who lived in that cramped space. Soon enough, one of the Snatchers blasted the door open and dragged them all out to check them.

“Ooh, I’ve found a looker here!” Leered the Snatcher, as he pushed Tom- and Harry, by extension- into a freight vehicle. It was full of people- dirty, frightened children of all ages- and a few faces they recognised. Harry was a little spooked, and Tom eased his worries by patting him gently.

“It’s going to be alright. They’ll let us out when we’re at Hogwarts, and we’ll escape from the Snatchers there.”

It was not going alright.

The freight carrier dropped them off at a dark, industrial area which was definitely not the Hogwarts they had heard about.

More armed Snatchers manhandled the children into a room- a large room near a boiler, it seemed, for they could feel the radiant heat- and told them to stay put or else.

At least, the room was warm.

They sat there for hours, or days- no one knew, until more Snatchers came and forcibly stripped off their clothes to inspect them like livestock. It was humiliating, and Tom felt more powerless than he had in a long time, and when the Snatchers left, he was one of the first to scramble to redress himself. For some reason, the Snatchers had left him much more uncomfortable than it had ever been to walk around barely clothed in Knockturn.

His stomach ached with hunger- but he was used to the sensation and merely ignored it. Harry had frozen in shock, and Tom directed his energy into calming him down.

“I don’t like this Hogwarts.” The green eyed boy mumbled into Tom’s chest. The latter didn’t have the heart to tell him they weren’t at Hogwarts, and that the chances of them ever making it to the City of Joy were falling by the second.

“It was just an inspection.” Tom told him, trying to convince himself that they would be free soon. “They just wanted to make sure we won’t carry any disease into Hogwarts.”

Harry nodded, not fully believing it himself.

It was only when the Snatchers had made sure the children were ‘healthy’ that they started the actual trafficking. Buyers began to trickle in, starting with the highest bidder, and began to sample the goods.

The Knockturn orphans watched with horror as their companions were violated, right in front of them. The prettiest of the lot became first pick, and Tom and Harry became part of that line-up. He held Harry tightly in his arms and covered the boy’s eyes when the buyer finished the transaction and decided that he was not taking his slave girl home.

Harry didn’t need to watch as the buyer used his slave to the fullest, before slowly mutilating the bound girl. If he could have, Tom would have closed up Harry’s ears too. But the room drowned in screams of pain and terror, and when the buyer left, the Snatchers swept pieces of the girl’s corpse into a bag and threw it into an incinerator.

When the transactions of the night were closed and more bodies burnt, the Snatchers locked the room and retired for the day.

It was hours before Harry would speak. The last time Harry had gone mute was when they had to watch one of the slum children being torn to shreds and eaten by dogs. Harry had frozen up against Tom’s chest, the older boy had covered his eyes and they had waited until the pack of strays had left to come out of their hiding spot.

“I’m scared.”

It was a simple sentence, but it tore at Tom’s heart.

He had gotten them into this. If only they had stayed at Knockturn! If only Tom hadn’t dragged Harry into his ambition of being a citizen of the Capital! And now-

No.

Tom was terrified too, but he was the older one. So he rocked Harry against him and quietly thought about the possibilities, and came to one conclusion.

He got up to look for possible exits, and then picked the lock into the boiler room. There seemed to be no one inside- it was far too hot, and even the machinery glowed like embers. That room had another door, which took a longer time to open.

Soon it would be morning, and again, the buyers would come.

Tom needed more time, which the line-up said they did not have. So they mustn’t- absolutely must not be part of the first line-up again.

He pulled Harry into the boiler room. “You understand why we’ve got to do this, don’t you?”

The boy nodded. If they were disfigured, they wouldn’t sell. He eyed the red-hot metal tanks. “I can’t do it by myself.” He looked expectantly at Tom, who nodded. “I’m ready.”

Tom took one last look at his Harry, branding all the details into his memory before pushing Harry against the boiler firmly.

The screams the younger boy made were raw and wretched as he thrashed in Tom’s grip; the smell of burning skin and sizzling meat nauseating, but Tom made sure every inch of Harry was burnt before letting go.

He held the bloodied boy close until the shudders had died down, and Harry was no longer heaving agonised sobs. He hadn’t fallen unconscious, though- which was lucky, because it was Tom’s turn.

Harry’s wide green eyes looked at him fearfully. Tom sighed.

“I’m not that strong, Harry.”

“I can’t bear to hurt you.”

Tom had weighed the options carefully in his head- but in the end nothing mattered more than getting out alive. His beauty had been a gift, something he had been sure could get him into high places, but it was a small price to pay for his life. After all, he had plenty of other winning traits to rely upon.

“Please, darling. This is our only way.” He kissed the charred skin on Harry’s forehead and wet his lips. It tasted coppery and bitter. “I need you to be strong where I can’t.”

Time was ticking by; precious seconds that suddenly meant more to him than all of Hogwart’s riches.

Harry steeled himself and pushed Tom onto the boiler, and blinding, white-hot pain coursed through every bit of his body.

Tom felt his tears fizz into scalding steam when it dropped onto his cheeks, the blinding agony of being cooked alive drawing inhuman sounds from his throat, ripping his larynx open, searing his vital, tender flesh for an eternity-

And then the agony disappeared and Tom was reeling from aftershock- pain creeping all the way into his bones while black and white dots danced all around his mind.

When he came to, Harry was holding him. They were both still in the boiler room, but it was time to go back to the trafficked children and hide amongst them before the Snatchers came. Blood had stuck their bodies together, and the pain still lingered enough to make any movement unbearable, but they bore with it and dragged themselves back into the prison room.

The other children had heard their screams, and looked at their ruined forms in horror; but it paid off when Tom and Harry were thrown at the back. It had bought them more time- which Tom spent in opening doors each night.

Finally, two weeks later, after several rooms and a maze of corridors, he made it to a door that opened into a set of metal staircases- a fire escape, it seemed. His eyes scanned the outside world intently, days of darkness inside the building had accustomed him to the lack of light- he could notice the smallest of details.

It was some dirty industrial area, probably owned by the Snatcher organisation, but there was light to the west. Lights that shone like a city at night.

He made his decision- and the very next night, Tom took Harry through the doors, dragging their aching, exhausted bodies only fuelled by desperation; lurking in shadows to escape the Snatchers on guard, out through the fire escape and over the concrete and steel roofs.

Stars guided them to the city, although in their run there was no time to admire the incredible sight of a clean night sky, and when all that remained was a canal between them and the city, Tom stopped to take a quick look back.

The lights were being switched on rapidly in that degenerate land, for the Snatchers must have spotted all the doors that Tom hadn’t bothered to close. Perhaps, a few of the children might have even escaped.

Who cared?

They sat quietly under the canvas covering on a goods-ferry, and only moved when they felt the vessel bump into the docks on the other side. The goods were unloaded into a carriage, and they rode on and on, until it was morning, and Tom woke up with a start when the canvas covering them was pulled off.

A wrinkled old face popped into view- with a gentle smile and twinkling blue eyes. “Hello.” The man said. “You two look like you’ve had a rough time.”

Tom automatically put a protective arm around Harry and darted his gaze about, taking in the picturesque city of golden spires and welcoming, colourful buildings. “What is this place?”

“Hogwarts.” The man said simply.

Their eyes widened, and their arms tightened around each other- for it seemed that there truly was something called Hope in the world.

***

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted in the Tomarrymort Discord server by Top the Prompt Dictator  
> Prompt: Harry and Tom live in the slums in a time were orphans being kidnapped and sold was the norm. Tom knows were to look and can use his pretty face as a weapon while Harry can't as well. Harry knows the risks but while he can notice most suspicious behavior some things go over his head. So Tom and Harry do the only thing they can think of to lower Harry's worth to a kidnapper- that is, scar his pretty face.
> 
> Okay, so I might have changed the story a little, and it's a lot darker than I initially expected while writing it. But here it is, and I'm so bloody proud.


End file.
